Linux 6.14 is here, HP considers SteamOS, plus new Zorin OS & EndeavourOS and more Linux news!
This week in Linux, we have a brand new version of the Linux kernel, including a boost for gaming performance and GPU workload protection in the Linux 6.14 release. There are some new distro releases to talk about with Zorin OS and Endeavour OS, as well as some beta releases from Fedora and Ubuntu. Plus, openSUSE is adding a long-requested feature to their Zypper Package Manager, and so much more on this episode of This Week in Linux. If you're new to the show, hi, I'm Michael, And this is the weekly news show that will keep you up to date with what's going on in the Linux and Open Source world. Now let's jump right into Your Source for Linux GNews.
This episode of TWIL is sponsored by Sandfly Security. More on them later. Linux Torvalds announced the latest release of the Linux kernel on Monday, and it is packed with new features, additional hardware support, and performance improvements. So let's start off with the ntsync driver that was added, and this is going to boost Windows game performance on Linux. Now, this is really cool because the Windows NT operating system offers some synchronization primitives that are too different from the ones that are used in Unix-like systems. So this creates performance problems when trying to emulate this behavior for software like Wine.
This release adds a driver that allows to model the NT primitives and spend less time trying to emulate it which can improve performance massively in some cases. In fact, sometimes frame rates can increase by 50% to 150% in some games via Wine. Now, this is great, but it's not exactly going to be related to everybody's gaming because with Proton, it's not really relevant. So there was a post that was asked on Bluesky to Valve developer Pierre-Loup Graffais, I maybe butchered that, sorry if I did, about when this feature would be added to Proton. And he responded by saying, we already include fsync, which should be as fast or faster as ntsync. We've developed ntsync as a general solution that would be acceptable in upstream wine, but there's no urgency in including it in the Deck or SteamOS kernel.
So this is interesting because I didn't know that fsync was specific for Proton and there you go. So fsync and ntsync are very similar. Work differently and one is for upstream and one is for the current usage in Proton. Next up, we have BTRFS RAID 1 read balancing. So BTRFS uses a PID based approach to distribute reads to the devices that are part of the RAID 1 setup.
This is optimal for many configurations, but not all. This release adds three new RAID 1 read balancing methods that help to distribute reads IO across devices. So there's three options, rotation, which keeps all devices active, latency for failing or unstable block layer transport, and devid, which is manual control. Also, they use uncashed buffered IO support prevents RAM from filling with unnecessary cache data for this release. So this release adds support for optionally sending buffered IO. So So pages will be dropped from the page cache once the data is read or written to.
So the reason for this is because basically fast storage devices that can fill the RAM with too much page cache that will not be needed. And with this root feature, it's possible to read and write data and then drop it from the cache without facing any disadvantages or complexity of dealing with direct IO. Now let's talk about the. Fs pre access event because this improves file access performance.
This release also adds the new fs notify event that gets generated before files contents is accessed. The event is synchronous. So if there is a listener for the this event, the kernel waits for reply on success of the execution. It continues as usual on failure, it's propagated to the error to user space. This even allows user space to fill in file content on demand from slow storage.
And now let's talk about GPU workload protection. This release uses cgroups to prevent GPU workloads from being terminated. Both GPU and driver allocated CPU memory will be accounted to the correct C group and eviction would have made a cgroup aware.
This means that GPU can be partitioned into cgroups that will allow jobs to run next to each other without interference. They've also added support for io-uring for fuse to improve performance for cloud storage and container workloads. They've also added a lot of hardware support and performance updates.
So the Intel GPU updates reduce power consumption on ARC Alchemist GPUs. They also have support now for DisplayPort UHBR modes on the upcoming Panther Lake platforms and new AMD XDNA driver ad support for AMD NPUs or neural processing units. And they've also done some other things for various updates, like, for example, VirtualBox guest drivers now work on ARM64 Linux VMs and unofficial Xbox 360 wireless receiver clones now work. And of course, everybody's been hoping this would happen. The Microsoft co-pilot keyboard key is now supported with Linux 6.14.
Now, to be fair, the co-pilot key is absolutely terribly just worthless, but it is going to be on keyboards going forward, laptops and stuff like that. So you kind of have to support it, unfortunately. So that is good that they've added that. And there's so much more.
So for those interested in learning more about the latest kernel release, you'll find links in the show notes. And for those eagle eyed people out there, yes, this past Monday sounds like I said it wrong because usually kernel releases happen on Sundays. Well, it turns out Linus is human and just forgot to push out the release. So in the release announcement, he says, so it's early Monday morning and I'd love to have some excuse for why I didn't do the 614 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon release schedule.
I like to say that some important last minute thing came up and delayed things. But no, it's just pure incompetence. Because absolutely nothing last minute happened yesterday, and I was just clearing up some unrelated things in order to be ready for the merge window, and in the process just entirely forgot to actually ever cut the release. D'oh
As they say, stuff happens. I've done something similar for this show, in fact. I've completed the show in every aspect of the production, including the writing, recording, editing, metadata, everything, and then schedule it for the wrong day by accident, making the show delayed for no apparent reason. It happens. The Zorin team have released the latest version of their beginner-friendly Linux distro with Zorin OS 17.3. This is a point release to the current Zorin OS 17 series, which is based on Ubuntu 22.04.
And this release focuses on new features, stronger privacy, and a better user experience. It is important to know that while this is based on Ubuntu 22.04, it does include hardware enablement support. So it has much more up-to-date stuff for hardware compatibility and stuff because the Linux kernel gets updated by the Ubuntu team doing the hardware enablement.
And that's pulled into Zorin OS. The team is also positioning this as an alternative for people losing support for Windows 10. They say, With Windows 10 reaching its end of life in October, millions of PCs that don't meet Windows 11 strict hardware requirements will be left behind. Zorin OS 17.3 is built to be the ideal replacement for Windows 10.
It gives these computers a new lease on life with a fast, user-friendly, and secure experience. That's the quote from Zorin OS's blog post. So let's talk about what's new. So they have done some pretty big updates with their, it's a really cool feature about being supporting of Windows apps and how they do it. So they say that we've greatly expanded our built-in database to detect installer files for popular Windows apps. It now supports over 150 apps recommending even more tailored alternatives to sideloading their Windows executables.
So for example, when you launch the Windows installer for an app like Obsidian. Zorin OS displays a dialogue that directs you to the app's native Linux version in the software store, if there is one. It also suggests the closest native alternatives to other Windows apps like the built-in Document Viewer instead of Adobe Acrobat Reader, for example. This update adds more apps to this supported feature. The Zorin team has also decided to replace Firefox as the default browser due to Mozilla's recent policy changes.
They say that they no longer feel assured that Firefox aligns with Zorin's commitment to protect the user's privacy. They said the following is what they've considered when choosing the replacement. They say that free and Open Source software is a requirement, of course. A general purpose, full-featured web browser. It should support common use cases,
including playing copyright protected content from popular streaming services. Also be privacy respecting, popular and recognizable, mature and well maintained. And they say that this is especially important for reliability and the quick availability of security patches. They discussed the new browser option with their community and landed with Brave.
They say that the reason they chose Brave is because they think it provides a plethora of features to preserve privacy and take back control so here's a list of what they say is why they chose it they say it shields against trackers and print and fingerprinting to protect you from online surveillance private browsing powered by tor for enhanced and in a non- Anonymity. I know how to say it, but for some reason, it just wouldn't come out right. Built-in ad blogger for a cleaner and more intentional browsing experience, automatic blocking of third-party cookies and cookie banners, and obviously there's probably some more. But this new default browser will only apply to new installs. Existing installs will still have Firefox unless they choose to manually switch to Brave. The Zorn team have also made some nice upgrades to their Zorin Connect feature, which is a shining piece of Zorin OS experience.
So Zorin Connect basically merges the experience between your devices like your computer and your phone so they can work together as one. It's integrated into the Zorin OS desktop and links your computer with Android devices to allow you to sync notifications between devices. Send files and photos between your phone and your computer, see incoming phone calls on your computer as well as reply to texts control music and video playback across your devices use your phone as a slideshow remote and so many things you can send commands to your computer which is very powerful so you can hit a button on your phone and just do whatever you want so if you set up a script it will run that script so Zorin connect is based on kde's kde connect tool and Zorin does make some customizations for their setup but the the two big features in their update that they put on their blog post is directly thanks to the upstream work from KDE Connect.
This is very cool because if you go to the KDE Connect website, it's hard to see some screenshots. So that's why I'm going to be using the Zorin blog post because they did provide very good screenshots. And one of those things that they did is that they have the KDE Connect team have redesigned the interface so that it adapts to your Android's device theme.
There's also a really cool update to the remote input functionality that lets you control your computer's keyboard and mouse from your phone. It now includes new features like middle click, compose and syntax, and a very interesting gyroscope mouse option, which is just really cool. Zorin also made some improvements for the touchscreen devices. For example, it's now possible to open the screen, the onscreen keyboard, whenever you want to from the panel.
Instead of only when you tap a screen, like a text field on the screen, it will automatically pop up. Now you can just pop it up whenever you want to, which is really cool. They've also made a lot of updates to their various apps and package support, and they've also made some improvements for compatibility and better security. And speaking of compatibility, there's some new hardware support for the newest NVIDIA RTX 5000 series graphics cards by including the latest NVIDIA 570 drivers. I think this release of Zorin OS is great, and it continues to keep them as one of the best beginner-friendly options.
And also, if you're interested in learning more about Zorin OS or the founder of Zorin, then be sure to check out the interview we did with him on my podcast, Destination Linux, because on episode 395, we interviewed Artyom Zorin and it was a great one. So if you haven't seen it, go check it out. The EndeavourOS team have announced a brand new release with the codename Mercury Neo. Unlike most distros, EndeavourOS doesn't use version numbers, but rather codenames to signify new releases. Personally, I'd prefer to have both, but c'est la vie. Mercury Neo is a bug fix update for the Mercury release, which I somehow missed last month.
I don't know how that happened. So let's fix that and talk about the release for Mercury as well. But first, Mercury Neo ships with Calamari's 25.02.2.1, this rolls right off the tongue, Firefox 136.0.2, Linux 6.13.7, the Mesa Drivers 25.0.1, and Xorg with 21.1.16,
and the NVIDIA 570 drivers. Mercury's features, the release from last month, has a lot of cool new features. So the ISO now has a memory test for EFI. KDE, GNOME, XFCE4, Mate, Budgie, and Cinnamon all now use dark theme by default. The XFCE4 theme is now closer to the default XFCE setup. And GNOME sets the dark and light wallpapers on changing mode automatically now.
And they've also done some changes to the mirrorless system, which I think is really cool because now when you rank your mirrorless during installation, it will be copied to the target before you'd have to do it multiple times if you did it during the installation process or just wait until it's already installed. And now in case the user changes it during the live session, it will now be moved over to the installation, which is very cool. So if you're interested in checking out the latest release of EndeavourOS, you'll find links in the show notes. As Linux users, we know what's up. Security is non-negotiable, but with threats getting smarter, your security tools need to keep pace without dragging your system down. And traditional agents, I mean, they just slow you down and leave blind spots.
It's time for a smarter approach, and that's why This Week in Linux is proud to be sponsored by Sandfly Security, the revolutionary agentless platform designed for Linux. Sandfly doesn't just detect and respond. It revolutionizes security with SSH key tracking, password auditing, and drift detection, covering threats from every angle. Whether your systems are in the cloud, on-premises, or in embedded devices, Sandfly ensures they're all secure, without the headaches of agent-based solutions. Listen to what Ken Kleiner, Senior Security Engineer at the University of Massachusetts, has to say.
He says, Sandfly is the first product I've seen that accurately and quickly detects thousands of signs of compromise on the Linux platform. Its unique method automates tasks which would be manually impossible. Automation is key with detection, and Sandfly completely fits this and other requirements. If your organization is using Linux, this should be part of your cybersecurity toolset. So experience security that's not just effective, but gives you peace of mind.
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your security strategy. Oh, and if you are fascinated by cybersecurity as much as I am, then go check out the interview we had on Destination Linux with the CEO of Sandfly and his awesome story about how he got into Linux, how he got into security and all this sort of stuff is very cool. We asked him so many questions and we basically, we ran out of time and we had so much more. It's a fascinating interview. Go check it out. destinationlinux.net/409 for that interview. And of course, again, if you want to check out Sandfly, thisweeklinux.com/sandfly. The Rescuezilla team have announced a brand new version of their distro with Rescuezilla 2.6.
For those unfamiliar, Rescuezilla is an Ubuntu-based distro and the team calls it the Swiss Army Knife of System Recovery. It leverages the CloneZilla Open Source disk imaging and cloning software to provide users the ability to perform backups, restores, and other recovery actions. So this release has been updated to be built on Ubuntu 24.10, Oracular Oriole, for better hardware support, and also updated UEFI Secure Boot Shim for Windows 11 compatibility. They fix the SBAT self-check failed errors on secure boot systems and ships with memtest86+ 7.0 for memory diagnostics and many, many more updates.
For those unfamiliar, this is a distribution you can use with LXDE. So if you are interested in a Swiss Army knife live USB system, you can use Rescuezilla with that. The Finnix team have announced the latest release of the original utility live Linux distribution. I was actually, they say that on their website and I was questioning, is it really the original version? Because I always thought Knoppix was the original one. And it turns out Finnix
beats Knoppix by a few months. I think it's September and March. So that's crazy. Anyway, if you don't like the idea of having a desktop environment, like with the LXDE environment on Rescuezilla, then the command line only option of Finnix might be your jam. Finnix is also celebrating their 25th anniversary of the project with this release of Finnix 250.
So Linux kernel 6.12 is included in this release. They've also made automatic per user shared SSH agent functionality more reliable. They added packages like util Linux extra. They've removed some various packages. They've also set so that boot or interim
boot initramfs now checks for build specific media. H top display improvements have been done for this release and also made a lot of updates for the upstream Debian packages. So if you are looking for a distro with hundreds of utilities available for recovery, maintenance and testing, but get offended by using a graphical user interface, then you might want to check out Finnix. The Fedora Linux team have announced the beta release for Fedora 42.
Fedora Linux 42 beta is now available for testing across multiple editions. You have the workstation, KDE Plasma Desktop, Server, IoT Cloud, and CoreOS. Upgrades existing Fedora systems are also possible with using DNF system upgrade. So the biggest changes here is that KDE Plasma Desktop is now an official Fedora edition. So you also get a new supported platform with PowerPC or PowerSystems.
It includes the full KDE stack with KDE PIM and live images and all that sort of stuff for the open power systems. And you get all the benefits of the KDE Plasma Desktop as an addition for the Fedora Linux project. So this Fedora KDE has been around for a very long time as a spin, but it has been upgraded to the full edition.
So it is at the same tier as the workstation with GNOME. And I think that's awesome. I think Fedora KDE is one of the best distributions, especially one of the best KDE distributions. And if you haven't tried it out, go check it out.
And also there's a new spin for Fedora with Fedora COSMIC so this is a rust based desktop environment built by the system 76 team for those unfamiliar this is the company who makes hardware for like laptops and desktops but they also make the distribution pop os and are now making their own desktop environment called COSMIC so this is a very interesting desktop environment it's kind of like a hybrid between uh tiling and floating with the window management they also are going to have Windows stacks and that sort of stuff. But this is still in a desktop environment that's in an alpha stage. So this is cool that Fedora is bringing it in to people who want to try it out, but it is not meant for the daily production use. Also in this release of the Fedora 42 beta is there's an update to Anaconda. So the new web UI is now default for Fedora Workstation. And this provides installation progress indicator, built-in help and configuration review.
The wizard also allows skipping unnecessary steps if you want to as well as includes a new guided partition system so automatic partitioning with customization options reinstall Fedora option for easy recovery dual boot support now it is worth noting this is only available for Fedora workstation. It is really cool to see that this is coming so what is a beta release for those unfamiliar it is a feature complete so to speak version but it is not ready to go it's more of a preview of the final release and it's sometimes a release candidate is more closer to that but a beta is for something that you're expecting to have some issues you need to fix so it's intended to be released for anyone who wants to help test and find any bugs that might happen for you know a stable final version to be released after that. So they say that every bug report helps millions of Fedora users worldwide. That's very true. So if you do want to try it out, and you do run into something, let them know. The Ubuntu team has announced the beta release for Ubuntu 25.04.
So this release comes with an updated kernel with Linux 6.14, which is the latest kernel that we talked about earlier this episode. They've also enhanced the installer with better dual boot support handling. And also they've updated the GNOME desktop environment for GNOME 48, which includes HDR support, the wellbeing tool and all the other stuff we talked about in a previous episode.
I'll have that linked in the show notes. They've also done some theme refinements for new symbolic icons, icon size fixes and that sort of thing. And they've also introduced Papers as the new document viewer for the system, as well as many other things, including some stuff for NVIDIA users and many more. We'll go into more details when we get to that kind of thing for the official release of 25.04 when that fully comes out. We'll go into much more detail like that, as well as we'll go into a lot more detail for Fedora 42 that we just talked about.
And also, if you want to check out the beta releases for the flavors, they are also available right now. So you can check those out in the links below. openSUSE is adding a long requested feature to their Zypper Package Manager and that is parallel downloads. This new feature should improve the performance of package management by reducing the time required to fetch packages and metadata. This update provides two main features, an ability to fetch packages using concurrent connections and a simplified media backend that improves connection reuse and metadata handling. Both features are currently in experimental phase, but it's fantastic to see because they're, by the way, they're currently available for those who are using tumbleweed and slow roll. So this is some really good news for people because a lot of people have been wanting Zypper to be able to do this for a very long time and kind of sometimes use this as an example of what the package manager needs and even the biggest need it has.
And I'm happy to see this being added to Zypper. If you'd like to learn more about this and what this all means, you'll find links in the show notes. The Steam Deck is a fantastic product. I have one and so do many others,
but there is one really big problem in the handheld gaming PC market, and that is Windows. Of course, setup experience, bad UI for handhelds, custom UIs from vendors feel disconnected from the experience. Like, it's just not great. But it turns out HP agrees with that, or at least somebody from HP agrees with that, and is interested in SteamOS gaming handhelds. So the HP's SVP of Gaming Solutions, Josephine Tan, says that if you look at Windows, I struggle for the experience myself. Says in an interview with the XDA developers, this is, I don't like it.
I don't know how to do a product for it. Also, Tan continues to say, if I'm buying a handheld, I want a very simple setup. The minute I turn on my handheld, it will remember the last game I played. In the Windows environment, it doesn't. Then also, when asked about making a gaming handheld with SteamOS, her answer was very simply yes meaning that Valve's SteamOS is definitely better suited for the form factor which if you're watching the show you knew that was true but it's really cool to see that HP also knows that but there is something worth noting and that is there was an update on this post that says let's be clear I think some people have taken this article a bit out of context so i want to be clear hp or more specifically Jo tan tan i'm not sure never promised that a gaming handheld is coming or that it would run steam os if it did she also did not bash Windows yes she did i mean technically she didn't bash Windows Windows does that to itself but the fact that this is a problem is a very clear issue for anyone who wants to ship a gaming handheld device so yeah it's not she's not bashing Windows Windows is bashing itself because it's terrible.
Anyway, they say the direct quotes in this article are accurate. So take it for what it is. And there you go. That's my take. I do think that Windows is bashing itself. And also, if they were to make one, I feel like it's likely they would want to not use Windows, whatever it might be, probably SteamOS. But they didn't technically say that they were going to, or if they did. That they would use SteamOS but you know reading between the lines probably more likely than not if that were to happen anyway if they were to make their own handheld thanks for watching this episode of this week in linux if you like what i do here on this show and want to be kept up today with what's going on in the linux and Open Source world and be sure to subscribe and of course remember to like that smash button if you'd like to support the show and the TuxDigital Network to consider becoming a patron by going to tuxdigital.com/membership.
We're gonna get a bunch of cool perks like access to patron-only sections of our Discord server and also access to, join me in the patron-only skybox that happens during the live streams as well as the patron-only post show that happens every week after the show and after the stream goes off. You can join me and have a conversation about whatever you want. Just becoming a patron to do that. tuxdigital.com/membership. You can also support the show by ordering the Linux if we're a t-shirt or the This Week in Linux shirt, what I'm wearing right now, at tuxdigital.com/store.
Plus, while you're there, check out all the other cool stuff we have like hats, mugs, hoodies, and so much more at tuxdigital.com/store. I'll see you next time for another episode of Your Source for Linux GNews. Thanks again for watching. I'm Michael Tunnell. I hope you're doing swell. Be sure to ring that notification bell. Until next time, I bid you farewell.
2025-04-04 00:26
